ON POINT WITH FACEBOOK’S CHANGES

With over 2 billion global users, Facebook is the world’s largest media platform by a long haul. It’s small wonder then that the hot topic for advertisers and media houses in 2018 so far is the continental shift taking place within the infamous algorithm.

On January 12th Mark Zuckerberg announced a move to prioritize “friends” content over publisher and news outlets. He stated, “I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.”

Mark Hull, Director of Product Management at Facebook said in a video released by the company,

“We’ll also consider whether a potential interaction is between two people, or a person and a page.”

While these changes are a determined response to the company coming under governmental scrutiny for its role in spreading “fake news” during the 2016 US presidential election, the ramifications for brands are wide spread. Organic reach from a page is now so low it might as well have been removed altogether from the newsfeed. Businesses will need to rethink their Facebook strategies for 2018, decreasing investment in content and increasing investment in paid advertising to deliver content to new audiences. You can be sure this change will affect the cost per click rates within the year and increase competition for spots in the newsfeed. The days of using Facebook’s cheap media spend to achieve results with weak adverts are over. Facebook has never been more audience focussed and effective ads must deliver high relevance and stand out to their intended viewers.

This shift is something Outlook Orange picked up early in 2017. The combination of plummeting ROI in both boosted and organic content as well as the new suite of business objectives from Facebook advertising had clearly marked the way forward. Moving on the changes early, we have been able to evolve our use of Facebook from driving engagement for the sake of engagement, to driving business objectives through paid advertising.